(v. 166) 21. Set up my image in the East: thou shalt buy thee an image which I will show thee, especial, not unlike the one thou knowest. And it shall be suddenly easy for thee to do this.(v. 167) 22. The other images group around me to support me: let all be worshipped, for they shall cluster to exalt me. I am the visible object of worship; the others are secret; for the Beast & his Bride are they: and for the winners of the Ordeal x. What is this? Thou shalt know.

Aiwass wrote:(v. 166) 21. Set up my image in the East: thou shalt buy thee an image which I will show thee, especial, not unlike the one thou knowest. And it shall be suddenly easy for thee to do this.

On its surface, this appears to be only a physical detail of the mode of worship; and such it certainly is, though not exclusively.

To set up a deity’s image “in the East” is to place it at the focal point of worship. The east is the place of the rising sun, the Golden Dawn. From verse 1 of this chapter, we know that this god is Ra-Heru-Khuti, the splendid and golden Sun in His Rising. It is also, as previously stated, a generic image or “stand in” for the Holy Guardian Angel in each of us. All of this, the entire Tipheric archetype, is to enter into our understanding of this phrase as an inward positioning of the god of our worship.

In brief: Ra-Hoor-Khuit in general, and the HGA specifically, are to be inwardly equated with the rising Sun, the Golden Dawn.

The Tipheric implications of this verse are utterly clear. Establishing an “image” of Ra-Hoor-Khuit in the East is very Tipheric. This wonderfully confirms the enumeration of the verse, for it is both verse 166 of the entire Book - one of the “6” verses - and also verse 21 of this chapter, 21 being Σ(1-6), the Mystic Number of Tiphereth, and a number otherwise keyed to Kether. But it is more than this: 21 is Y.H.V., the Trigrammaton, and shows the Supreme Name manifest to the level of Vav, the Son, and to the World of Yetzirah, the World of Images. It shows the Central Light of Yod extended to the level of image.

(v. 167) 22. The other images group around me to support me: let all be worshipped, for they shall cluster to exalt me. I am the visible object of worship; the others are secret; for the Beast & his Bride are they: and for the winners of the Ordeal x. What is this? Thou shalt know.[/b]

Ra-Hoor-Khuit is “the visible object of worship.” This is a tremendously important sentence and concept in Thelemic religion. It has many concepts attached to it, including the following:

1. For the general populace - the public - our religion is to be consistently declared and enacted as a solar religion. This is the best and most suitable of blinds, for it is one that really communicates useful truth, summarizing the essential truthful doctrines of all faiths. But this is no longer a “rising and setting Sun” cult, but one centered upon the eternity of the Invisible Sun, the bright and beautiful Child of the Supernal Parents. The fact that there is a deeper mystery behind this - for example, that the Sun is but one example of a Star - may, of course, be apparent for those who know how to look. However, for the public, the Sun communicates the ideas much better.

2. This same thing is true, in a different sense, to the Man of Earth among initiates. Tiphereth is really about the highest reality a non-adept can conceive, as an ideal, to lead him or her forward. The average initiate, trying to think of the Supernals, reaches no better than Tiphereth, at least in the usual case.

3. RHK is the “stand in” for the Holy Guardian Angel, at least until the Adept replaces this projection with the real thing.

RHK is the visible object of worship. That is (perhaps because He manifests as a Khu), he reaches to the level of images, Yetzirah, and is capable of manifesting his Divine and Briatic aspects to that plane.

“the others are secret.” The “others” require direct spiritual apprehension, an awakened Briatic (samadhic) consciousness that can receive their impressions. By "the others," I understand the following meanings:

1. Nuit and Hadit: This gives a distinction between Nu and Had themselves vs. their images. The images may be accessible to all; but they, themselves, are secret, i.e., unknown, to the Man of Earth.

2. Or, the first sentence means that any gods whatsoever, any objects of worship whatsoever, are to be grouped around RHK. On the physical plane, this is a format of worship. The meaning is that what RHK represents is the same thing that every other god - every “object of worship” - ultimately represents. They “support” Him and “cluster to exalt” Him, for every avenue of sincere worship is a pathway to that central idea which He represents. (The worship of any deity may be a direct avenue of communion with the HGA, whom RHK represents.) These are to be grouped “around” RHK, i.e., at the circumference, while He is the center of them all, the heart and kernel of what they all represent. Nonetheless, “let all be worshipped” (emphasis added): at one extreme, an injunction to worship Nuit, the All, and all things soever through Her; at the other, leave and encouragement to worship any god one chooses, for the worship of any of them is, ultimately, the worship of RHK, or Ishvara, or Adonai - it’s all the same.

The “others” - Nuit and Hadit - “are secret.” They really are not even comprehensible to most folks. (There are, of course, lower octaves that the Yetziratic mind can grasp. Nuit, by Her image, as a form of the Great Mother, is certainly within reach of even the uninitiated. She can be seen in Mary &c. But this is not Her.) The worship of these “others” is reserved (by capacity, not by ordinance) to:

1. the Beast & his Bride (the 666 & 667 archetypes as real inner Officers of the Æon); and2. “the winners of the Ordeal x. ”

What is “the Ordeal x”? The clue is in the initials “O x.” This could mean many things; on many levels, the highest of which is an allusion to Aleph (“Ox”). Generally, though, it refers to Adepts. OX is a reference to the Rosy Cross. This seems true, and also seems to be what AC had in mind when he issued Liber NV and Liber H A D for use of the Adeptus Minor and designated them, “for the Winners of Ordeal X.“ At a higher level, of course, [the N.O.X. sigil] refers to the Magisteri, who are on a par with “the Beast & his Bride.” Yes, I think this is it. “Beast & his Bride” refers to Chokmah- and Binah-consciousness in general, and “winners of the Ordeal x” to that of Tiphereth. Yod, Heh, and Vav. “God” sends angels to communicate to those who cannot look directly upon Her face. (I should not fail to mention that O and X themselves refer to Nuit and Hadit as the circumference and the center point. The “knowing” intended in the last sentence is the gnosis arising from samadhi, whence these phenomena are self-evident.)

AC, in the N.C., blatantly said:

There are to be no regular temples of Nuit and Hadit, for they are incommensurables and absolutes. Our religion therefore, for the People, is the Cult of the Sun, who is our particular star of the Body of Nuit, from whom, in the strictest scientific sense, come this earth, a chilled spark of Him, and all our Light and Life. His vice-regent and representative in the animal kingdom is His cognate symbol the Phallus, representing Love and Liberty. Ra-Hoor Khuit, like all true Gods, is therefore a Solar-Phallic deity. But we regard Him as He is in truth, eternal; the Solar-Phallic deities of the old Æon, such as Osiris, “Christ,” Hiram, Adonis, Hercules, &c., were supposed, through our ignorance of the Cosmos, to “die and rise again.” Thus we celebrated rites of “crucifixion” and so on, which have now become meaningless. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the Crowned and Conquering Child. This is also a reference to the “Crowned” and Conquering “Child” in ourselves, our own personal God. Except ye become as little children, said “Christ,” ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is Malkuth, the Virgin Bride, and the Child is the Dwarf-Self, the Phallic consciousness, which is the true life of Man, beyond his “veils” of incarnation. We have to thank Freud - and especially Jung - for stating this part of the Magical Doctrine so plainly, as also for their development of the connexion of the Will of this “child” with the True or Unconscious Will, and so for clarifying our doctrine of the “silent self” or “Holy Guardian Angel.”

(I quoted this in The Mystical & Magical System of the A.'.A.'. with respect to the HGA. It has some chance of being misunderstood if people misinterpret “phallic.” Nonetheless, it discloses a great deal... a very great deal.)